As Gaza marks its 700th of ongoing genocide, Israeli occupation forces intensified their bombardment across the Strip on Friday, unleashing a wave of airstrikes and artillery bombings, killing 70 Palestinian citizens in the Gaza Strip. Israeli forces firebombed a bus full of children, burning them alive, and conducted controlled demolitions of some of the last remaining residential apartment towers in Gaza.
Israeli forces have continued shelling and bombing of homes and tents of the displaced almost non-stop, and shooting at Palestinians trying to obtain food aid. Of those killed, 9 were shot and killed at the US corporate run ‘aid sites’ in which the company GHF forces Palestinian civilians to fight each other for morsels of food in a real-life ‘Hunger Games’ style arena.
The Director-General of the World Health Organization, Tedros Ghebreyesus, warned today, Friday, of the continuation of famine in the Gaza Strip, calling on the Israeli occupation state to stop this disaster, noting that at least 370 people have been killed due to hunger in the besieged and destroyed Strip since the beginning of the war on October 7, 2023.
“It is a disaster that Israel could have avoided and stopped at any moment,” he said during a press conference at the organization’s headquarters in Geneva”.
He stated that the United Nations announced on August 22 that a state of famine prevailed in some areas of the Gaza Strip, while Israel claimed that no famine had occurred.
“Since the war began in October 2023, at least 370 people have died from malnutrition in Gaza, including more than 300 in the last two months,” Ghebreyesus added.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said in an urgent statement Friday that more than 700,000 children in the Gaza Strip are deprived of formal education due to the ongoing war and widespread destruction.
The organization stressed that Gaza’s children have been stripped of their fundamental right to learn, as schools have turned into shelters for displaced families, while homes have been reduced to rubble, leaving no safe place for education.
On Friday, Hamas condemned the escalation of Israeli military operations in Gaza City, calling it a violation of international law and a public admission of intent to commit massacres, destroy neighborhoods, and forcibly displace civilians.
The targeting of residential towers, including those housing displaced people, is described as a crime against humanity. Hamas criticized Israel’s claims that these buildings were used by the Resistance, calling them false justifications.
The group urged the international community and the ICC to hold Israeli leaders accountable, impose sanctions, and prevent further war crimes. Hamas warned that attempts to prolong the assault will only bring Israel shame, failure, and further losses.
After over three weeks of invasion and destructive operations, Israeli occupation forces left behind scenes of massive destruction in the Hassan Al-Banna area of Gaza’s Al Zaytoun neighborhood.
The following attacks by Israeli forces against Palestinian civilians were documented by local sources on Friday:
11:40 pm
Two Palestinians were killed and others injured, mostly women and children, as Israeli occupation forces struck a house near Al-Shati Camp in western Gaza City.
7 pm
Israeli occupation forces carry out detonations and airstrikes on the eastern areas of Gaza City.
6 pm
Israeli occupation aircraft strike central Khan Younis in southern Gaza Strip.
5 pm
Israel has just bombed a bus carrying children and women at the Tuwam junction, northwest of Gaza. The children were burned inside the vehicle, and fire was opened on civil defense teams while they were trying to rescue them.
Israeli warplanes also bombed a house south of Khella station, northern Gaza City.
4 pm
The Israeli army bombed Mushtaha residential tower and threatened to bomb another one, Makka tower, in Gaza in preparation for the invasion of Gaza city. Minister Katz posted a picture of the destroyed building and commented, “We started”. The 14-story Mushtaha residential tower was home to around 50 apartments. Israel reduced all these homes to rubble in seconds.
3 pm
Israeli occupation forces carry out a demolition operation using explosives in the “Tohoko” residential area, south of Hamad City in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza Strip.
Israeli forces announce the evacuation and planned controlled demolition of Makka Tower. This tower is not just a building, it is the home of more than 180 families who are now left without shelter, without tents, and without any basic living necessities.
The ongoing targeting of civilian homes is a continuation of the daily genocide that the Gaza Strip is enduring.
Palestinian families are throwing their belongings from upper floors’ windows in a rush to evacuate the Makka Residential Tower after Israeli forces threatened to bomb it, leaving them with nowhere to go after Israel’s complete destruction of the Gaza Strip.
UPDATED FROM:
11:30 am report
Israeli forces have killed more than 35 Palestinians, including at least seven children, on Friday.
The attacks targeted densely populated neighborhoods, shelters, and aid distribution points, compounding the humanitarian catastrophe already gripping the enclave.
Medical sources in Gaza have confirmed that Israeli airstrikes since dawn Friday have killed at least 30 Palestinians, including 18 in Gaza City alone. Among the dead are seven children, victims of direct attacks on residential apartments and tents sheltering displaced families.
The strikes targeted areas already overwhelmed by previous bombardments, leaving behind scenes of devastation and grief.
This follows a deadly wave of attacks on Thursday, which claimed the lives of 62 Palestinians across multiple regions of the Strip. Of those, 35 were killed in Gaza City, where Israeli forces intensified their assault on civilian zones.
Hospitals, operating under siege and with dwindling resources, continue to receive the dead and wounded in staggering numbers.
Medical teams report that many of the casualties are women and children, and that the nature of the injuries reflects the indiscriminate force of the attacks. With shelters destroyed and aid convoys blocked, the population remains trapped between bombardment and starvation.
Among the victims were seven Palestinians killed while waiting for humanitarian assistance in central and southern Gaza, an act described by local medics as “a massacre of the desperate.”
Hospitals, already overwhelmed and critically under-resourced, reported scenes of chaos as families rushed to identify loved ones amid the rubble.
The heaviest toll came from strikes in Gaza City, where 35 civilians were confirmed dead. Rescue teams, operating with minimal equipment and under constant threat, struggled to reach survivors trapped beneath collapsed buildings. Eyewitnesses described entire residential blocks reduced to ash within minutes.
Meanwhile, Palestinian fighters from Saraya al-Quds, the military wing of Islamic Jihad, and the Al-Aqsa Brigades, affiliated with Fatah, announced a joint mortar attack on an Israeli command post in the Zeitoun neighborhood, in Gaza city.
The Israeli escalation comes amid growing international alarm over the scale of destruction and civilian casualties.
Rights groups have warned that Israel’s campaign, marked by indiscriminate shelling, forced displacement, and the deliberate targeting of aid convoys, meets the legal threshold for genocide. Yet global powers remain divided, with the United States continuing to block accountability efforts at the International Criminal Court.
Inside Gaza, the situation is dire. Famine conditions persist, clean water is scarce, and electricity remains cut off across most areas. Aid trucks are routinely denied entry, and medical supplies have all but vanished. The death toll from starvation and preventable illness continues to rise, even as bombs fall.
Amjad Al-Shawa, Director of the Palestinian NGO Network in Gaza, issued a stark warning on Friday, describing the current stage of Israel’s assault as “the most dangerous” since the beginning of the genocide.
Speaking to Al Jazeera, Al-Shawa expressed deep concern over what he called the normalization of Palestinian suffering in global discourse.
His words reflect a growing fear among humanitarian workers and civil society leaders: that the scale of devastation in Gaza has become so routine, so relentless, that the world has begun to look away.
With thousands of children killed, entire families erased, and famine conditions worsening, the humanitarian crisis has reached catastrophic levels. Yet global action remains paralyzed.
Al-Shawa’s statement is not just a plea for aid—it’s a demand for moral clarity. It calls out the dangerous drift toward indifference, where war crimes are met with silence and the deliberate targeting of civilians is buried beneath diplomatic language.
As Gaza’s civil infrastructure collapses and international legal mechanisms stall, voices like Al-Shawa’s serve as a moral compass, reminding the world that behind every statistic is a life, a family, a future stolen.
The Al-Mawasi area in Khan Younis has become a hotspot of overcrowding and thirst, as thousands of displaced Palestinians continue to flee from northern Gaza under relentless bombardment. Humanitarian agencies are sounding the alarm over the deteriorating conditions, warning that the forced concentration of civilians in this narrow coastal zone is creating a humanitarian disaster.
James Hobbler, humanitarian policy advisor at Oxfam America, criticized Israel’s evacuation orders as inconsistent and chaotic. He noted that Palestinians in Gaza have been subjected to repeated displacement throughout the war, often receiving conflicting instructions that leave them with nowhere safe to go.
According to Hobbler, many families have been uprooted more than ten times, each time forced into areas with no functioning health centers, no clean water, and no basic services. Entire communities are now crammed into makeshift shelters in zones that were never equipped to host such numbers, while aid agencies struggle to respond amid ongoing attacks and access restrictions.
A stark warning issued Friday by UNICEF has cast a grim light on the fate of children in Gaza, declaring that the city is no longer a place where childhood can survive. The organization described Gaza as a landscape of fear, displacement, and funerals—where the youngest and most vulnerable are being pushed beyond the limits of endurance.
Speaking from inside the Strip via video link to journalists in New York, UNICEF spokesperson Tess Ingram said that children are struggling to stay alive as basic services collapse around them. She urged immediate action to prevent what she called “a tragedy beyond imagination,” but emphasized that the catastrophe is not looming—it is already unfolding. “The unthinkable is not approaching,” she said. “It is here.”
Ingram described how malnutrition and hunger are weakening children’s bodies, while displacement has stripped them of shelter, care, and safety.
Every movement is shadowed by the threat of airstrikes, and the few remaining health centers are overwhelmed or destroyed. Families are forced to make impossible choices—whether to flee under fire or stay in ruins—with no guarantee of survival either way.
A video shows the massive destruction of citizens’ homes in the Al-Zeitoun neighborhood of Gaza City, caused by the Israeli occupation forces. pic.twitter.com/Uoc0nuSee6
— TIMES OF GAZA (@Timesofgaza) September 5, 2025
As of September 4, 2025, Of the 64,231 Palestinians killed, roughly half are believed to be women and children. Thousands of children have died in airstrikes, artillery shelling, and from starvation-related causes as the siege deepens and humanitarian access remains blocked. These are not incidental casualties.
Among the dead are approximately 400 individuals who had previously been listed as missing but whose deaths have now been verified. The scale of loss is staggering, and the numbers continue to rise as Israeli bombardment intensifies across the Strip, it reflects a pattern of targeting that has devastated civilian life and erased entire families.
In addition to the dead, more than 150,000 Palestinians have been injured, according to estimates from field hospitals and humanitarian agencies operating under extreme conditions. Many of the wounded suffer from life-altering injuries, including amputations, severe burns, and trauma-related complications. With medical infrastructure collapsing and supplies nearly exhausted, the chances of survival for many are slim.
